Background on DC Mayoral Primary

Muriel Bowser Declares Victory

On June 22nd, 2022, Muriel Bowser won her second term for DC Mayor. Bowser’s message: she is the next Marion Barry, the only mayor to serve three consecutive terms. During her election night victory, she said: “Tonight we choose a future where we won’t lose our Chocolate City, but we will invest in it, and we will continue to be a city for Black Washingtonians.” from DCist

Mayor Bowser also won with just 49.8% of the vote. As someone who is interested in election data, I wanted to better understand the results of the elections through multiple visualizations.

Across the three visualizations, green will represent Mayor Bowser, blue will represent Robert White, and orange will represent Trayon White.

Cleaning the Data

Here is data from the DC Elections office of the 2022 Primary. I did some simple filtering to narrow it to the Mayor’s election.

Election Result Table

precinct ward nvotes bowser twhite rwhite
1 6 1364 608 167 589
2 2 90 34 2 54
3 2 571 380 17 174
4 2 714 467 14 233
5 2 721 552 8 161
6 2 669 502 10 157
7 3 570 366 9 195
8 3 1312 967 13 332
9 3 503 414 3 86
10 3 816 620 8 188
11 3 1292 688 19 585
12 3 238 179 4 55
13 2 549 361 5 183
14 2 945 488 16 441
15 2 1185 579 17 589
16 2 1324 734 34 556
17 2 1397 663 43 691
18 6 0 0 0 0
19 5 1426 621 105 700
20 1 276 120 21 135
21 6 0 0 0 0
22 1 1594 788 40 766
23 1 1045 455 49 541
24 1 1144 541 9 594
25 1 1797 883 19 895
26 3 1456 820 13 623
27 3 1301 838 18 445
28 3 1186 813 16 357
29 3 596 382 12 202
30 3 759 514 7 238
31 3 1415 938 15 462
32 3 1506 979 19 508
33 3 1562 963 16 583
34 3 1992 1041 42 909
35 1 1457 606 30 821
36 1 1341 508 102 731
37 1 1054 448 55 551
38 1 974 352 54 568
39 1 1578 696 52 830
40 1 1500 661 44 795
41 1 1078 434 48 596
42 1 691 284 22 385
43 1 616 248 50 318
44 5 761 371 104 286
45 4 850 362 56 432
46 4 1107 467 65 575
47 4 1287 533 45 709
48 4 1114 561 50 503
49 4 327 115 25 187
50 3 1088 673 14 401
51 4 1766 1205 22 539
52 4 797 582 4 211
53 4 488 291 22 175
54 4 845 406 44 395
55 4 847 388 66 393
56 4 1088 480 87 521
57 4 824 352 55 417
58 4 745 340 59 346
59 4 999 471 60 468
60 4 593 328 50 215
61 4 612 350 39 223
62 4 1766 1151 30 585
63 4 1576 783 68 725
64 4 924 503 48 373
65 4 1051 564 86 401
66 5 1881 922 185 774
67 5 1215 635 84 496
68 5 837 383 59 395
69 5 926 450 63 413
70 5 608 290 44 274
71 5 890 467 87 336
72 5 1108 483 166 459
73 5 857 375 61 421
74 5 1508 640 152 716
75 5 1265 463 114 688
76 5 463 162 52 249
77 5 899 371 105 423
78 5 687 256 122 309
79 5 379 144 84 151
80 7 2334 976 324 1034
81 6 872 382 50 440
82 6 982 427 59 496
83 6 1227 510 61 656
84 6 838 455 17 366
85 6 1127 622 20 485
86 6 631 323 9 299
87 6 129 69 9 51
88 6 965 507 19 439
89 6 1212 677 14 521
90 6 606 349 11 246
91 6 1478 669 98 711
92 7 293 107 94 92
93 7 398 191 93 114
94 7 507 213 115 179
95 7 340 135 79 126
96 7 491 203 132 156
97 7 311 146 83 82
98 7 499 244 122 133
99 7 344 166 74 104
100 7 519 204 180 135
101 7 481 221 84 176
102 7 564 245 161 158
103 7 799 327 240 232
104 7 741 285 230 226
105 7 572 253 145 174
106 7 775 377 175 223
107 7 295 133 104 58
108 7 408 215 44 149
109 7 419 220 24 175
110 7 1232 603 198 431
111 7 549 270 123 156
112 8 482 227 107 148
113 7 791 397 130 264
114 8 619 237 186 196
115 8 441 159 197 85
116 8 654 243 267 144
117 8 432 145 194 93
118 8 554 174 250 130
119 8 417 131 171 115
120 8 509 179 203 127
121 8 732 284 283 165
122 8 389 180 127 82
123 8 486 219 153 114
124 8 627 268 208 151
125 8 795 309 315 171
126 8 694 263 281 150
127 6 1534 778 128 628
128 6 707 325 51 331
129 2 2529 1300 148 1081
130 6 340 189 5 146
131 6 668 291 30 347
132 7 408 194 94 120
133 8 330 175 62 93
134 8 479 172 202 105
135 5 994 462 69 463
136 3 380 189 2 189
137 1 424 202 12 210
138 3 1075 665 19 391
139 5 1039 604 107 328
140 8 1279 588 166 525
141 2 892 429 13 450
142 6 798 413 51 334
143 2 226 130 3 93
144 6 897 294 44 559

So what does this mean? It’s hard to make heads or tails of a bunch of numbers. Luckily, R allows us to visualize the data in multiple ways to tell different stories.

Graphing Vote Totals in Lineplot

Let’s look at total number of votes per precinct in a simple linegraph.

This would give us the impression that Mayor Bowser is the clear and consistent favorite. What if we looked at the percent point break down per precinct?

It looks a little closer. Mayor Bowser and Robert White are neck and neck in a few precincts. Trayon White is the clear favorite in a few. The two gaps are the precincts that don’t report any votes.

Chloropleth Mapping

Lines on a graph are great, but they don’t explain very well where these close precincts were in the city. In which precincts did each candidate perform well?

This is a map of dc precincts courtesy of the DC Department of Elections.

As we can see, there tends to be a geographic cluster where each candidate performed well. Unfortunately, these choropleths only explain where each candidate did well relative to their best performance. Trayon White’s best performance was with 40% of the vote, whereas Mayor Bowser won some with a blowout of close to 80%.

Robert White Votes

Mayor Bowser Votes

Trayon White Votes

Turnout Data

One final item to consider is turnout, which measures the share of registered voters per precinct who turned out to vote. As we can see in the graph below, turnout of each candidate’s voter base varied, but Bowser consistently had the highest percent of the vote per precinct, which is likely what brought her to victory.

I hope to visualize the data from the next election cycle and compare it to these results to continue to look for trends within elections.